Quoted from RTR:I can understand a very modest salary while your company is getting off the ground and while you are performing full time work for said company. My beef is taking a salary while nothing is happening. Nothing has been happening for most of the 4 plus years now. Attending to self-inflicted wounds is not a legitimate use of 'salary'.
We don't know they kept drawing a salary, and from where I'm sitting it looks like something was happening -- they got a second CM to produce a machine in China. That's a first AFAIK, and not an easy thing to do.
Candidly I feel like your arguments lose a lot of power when you make statements like "nothing was happening for most of the 4 plus years." Clearly things have been happening. They haven't been happening fast enough for, well anyone I expect.
Quoted from RTR:How long do you think one should take a 'salary' from loaned money under those circumstances? What would your bank say about using your line of credit in this manner. (hint, they would say no.). The EA's are/were the bank. So I can say whatever the hell I want about misuse of these funds.
See this is what I'm talking about. Of course you can say whatever the hell you want.
That doesn't make you right.
All you are doing is confusing the issue. This doesn't add power to your claim.
You didn't loan DP money. You ordered a pinball machine. You are a customer. Not a bank. Not an equity partner.
You haven't received your pinball machine. That sucks. I would be livid. But the reality is that your recourse is limited at this point.
Regarding lines of credit, I often used my business line of credit for payroll. That is absolutely a permitted use.
Quoted from RTR:I understand traveling and promoting your product when you need the sales. Not when you have a backorder of hundreds of units and you need to conserve cash. Not to promote a dumbass non-TBL idea (BOP 25). Not to engage another CM when you haven't resolved the situation with your current CM.
We have to agree to disagree on this one probably. The time to start working on a new product depends on a lot of things, but given the long amount of time it takes to design and field a new pin, and the relatively short sales cycle of a pin, I'd say they were doing the right thing to have another product lined up post TBL.
I have no comment about whether or not BOP 25 was good or bad. Never played it and don't know much about it, apart from liking BOP 2.0).
It seems reasonable to me to pursue a second CM if your first one won't produce machines at a price you committed to sell them for.
Quoted from RTR:Just because something starts out feeling legit does not mean it didn't take a turn somewhere into scam territory - intentionally or unintentionally.
No, a scam has to be intentional to be a scam. Let's call things what they are. They did a piss-poor job of communicating, they may have made some very bad business decisions. I'm not seeing a scam.
Quoted from RTR:What is the difference, at this point, between what Jpop did with investors money and what DP has done and is doing?
Well, I'm sure there are people better qualified with the whole Jpop thing but just to run down the notable differences that jump out at me:
0) I own and enjoy quite a few old Jpop games. But I don't recall reading a good review of Magic Girl, though it's hard to say since it really wasn't finished, was it? On the other hand, TBL is widely regarded as a very good pin. Not just a good one. A very good one. This is significant, because intent to sell a hit is very different from intent to sell a game that may turn out great if I just had another million or two dollars.
1) From what I have read didn't Jpop have a history of selling pre-orders for several pins that weren't delivered? Didn't he only deliver something like 10 Magic Girls, and they weren't really finished or playable? At least that's what I understand a court to have determined. I think the court found a history of a failure to deliver, and an attempt to deliver a non-working product as a working product. In contrast with DP which looks like a contract dispute that we don't know much about at all.
2) I also understand that Jpop was asking for pre-order money much more aggressively. I contrast that with DP, who once they found out that their CM couldn't deliver, refused money even though people were throwing it at them. I don't see an intent to defraud people from DP. If defrauding was their goal, I'd expect them to have been standing next to their Chinese TBL with an order book in hand at the shows they went to, and I don't believe that happened.
3) I don't think Jpop had a contract with a CM - wasn't his plan to build them in his basement or something as a boutique, turning out just a few copies of each title? I may be mixed up about that. If that's the case, the failure would seem to point much more to Jpop. Again, in DP's case there is an unsettled dispute with a CM that stopped making machines for reasons we don't know.
4) I'm unaware of the state of Jpop's ability to manufacture more Magic Girls. Perhaps with Deeproot's backing, Magic Girl can be completed and rolled out. However, with DP there is a completed pin that works great: TBL. The sample from CM#2 appears and plays identical to the production machines from CM#1. It looks like TBL's could roll off the line /if/ this contract dispute is settled.
I find these differences substantial.